32 PROCTOR | December 2015
Women in the law –
is the profession changing?
Advice for those
in a difficult position,
First, be flexible.1
For the years 1986-87, only 74 women
were admitted. It should be remembered
that this was a much smaller profession –
the total number of practitioners in 1988
was 2834 compared to 10,962 in 2015.
I thought that researching how things have
changed in the Queensland legal profession
would be one interesting measure of
progression over the past 27 years. How has
the profession changed? Have the questions
I posed in 1988 been answered?
There are some significant changes
in the judiciary – in 2015, Queensland
appointed its first female Chief Justice.
In 2015, according to the courts’ website,
business and community would be reported
at the next UN conference in 10 years’ time.
Despite all the goodwill and outcomes of
the Beijing conference, few of the advances
or achievements have ever been further
reported on, and there has never been
another such world conference.
In November 1988, as then president
of the Women Lawyers Association of
Queensland, I wrote the cover article for
Proctor, entitled ‘Women in Law’.
2Init,I
provided an analysis of QLS figures for legal
practitioners, showing that only 6% of all
principals were women despite the fact that
they comprised 15.56% of practitioners.
In September 1995, thousands
of women representing both
government and non-government
organisations across the globe
gathered in Beijing for the United
Nations Conference on Women.
I was privileged to attend that conference,
which concluded with agreements about the
way forward for government and business
to recognise and implement change in
the future, and how those advancements
in women’s participation in government,
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